What was the role of images in the religious experience of Castilian people of the 13th and 14th centuries? There is no clear answer, and the scarcity of written evidence has prompted much problematic speculation. However, on the basis of the images themselves and of relevant literary sources, including the well-known Cantigas de Santa María and works by 14th-century authors such as Juan Ruiz and Juan Manuel, it is possible to explore a number of key issues. The talk will be divided into three sections. One focuses on the 13th century: ‘Active images: the Cantigas de Santa María and their aftermath’. Another looks to the 14th century: ‘Passive images: the reception and dissemination of the Crucifixus dolorosus in Castile’. And it concludes by looking ‘beyond’ Art History. In the 1960s a Spanish politician coined the (in)famous tourist slog, ‘Spain is different’. His aim was to encourage foreigners to visit Spain, but the slogan is representative of a commonplace that has been repeated time and again since the Romantic era. Ultimately, my talk offers an invitation to reconsider whether Castilian and Spanish devotional practices are really so very different from those recorded elsewhere in medieval western Europe. Continue reading →

Reading Group, 12 – 3:00 pm, Friday 14 March at Queen Mary, when we will look at the introduction and fifth chapter in Cynthia Robinson’s Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile: the Virgin, Christ, Devotions, and Images in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries (University Park, Pa., 2013). This may be useful for anyone interested in fourteenth and fifteenth-century Spanish art and devotional culture, devotional images more generally, and Muslim-Christian encounters. There will be a number of historians of literature/religion in attendance. Discussion will take place over a sandwich lunch, and is followed by a talk by Lluís Ramon i Ferrer: ‘La Vita Christi de Ludolfo de Sajonia y la función empática del arte: la imago pietatis y la devoción a la Sangre de Cristo.’ Both events will take place in room 1.36 of the Arts One Building, Mile End Campus (5 min walk from Mile End tube).

For further information and PDFs of the readings, please contact Dr. Tom Nickson at: Tom.Nickson@courtauld.ac.uk